A Different Sort of Immortality
by ModernTroubadour
Summary: Nagini grants her master "immortality through the arts." We see the original Voldemort as he watches and remarks upon the result: Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone.


**A Different Sort of Immortality**

_Foreword: If the points of view presented in this story seem troubling, or downright incorrect, remember that this is a story, and you shouldn't believe all you read in stories anyway._

From a place far away and long ago, two people watched the woman open a book and read to her class of twenty ten-year-olds. Some looked bored; others who obviously knew the story nodded smugly at the bits they recalled; and still others, wide-eyed, hung onto every word.

"The Boy Who Lived," quoted one of the two observers scathingly, watching one of the children sneak forward and tie the teacher's shoelaces in a double knot. "Why it has to be his bloody story I have no idea. Whose idea was it to cast me as the villain, anyway?"

"It was yours," replied the other calmly. Her strong features, wide eyes, and straight brows gave her the look of unshakable serenity and compassion, but there was something unforgiving as stone in the core of her gaze. "Remember that we are judged by our actions, not by our thoughts."

"I know that," said the first of the observers. The thought behind his voice was forceful, but emotionless – or else it held so many emotions that no clear one could be picked out. "I know that," he repeated, with the endless patience of one who is dead, "but still – I don't know. I have done many evil things in my life – things that I have suffered for, I mean, as much as I know how. And you know that I of all people know best my limits, and – "

"That is true," interrupted the other, ever the mediator, "but you sometimes fail to see the full length of your strengths."

"I don't think I ever could feel as deeply as he could, though," he said, ignoring her. "I have seen him once or twice, but we really have nothing in common. Sometimes I have wondered… I have killed people: not because I was forced to, or because they would have killed me otherwise. For some of them I did feel regret. For others, nothing. I am glad to say that none of them was from a misunderstanding. I _meant_ to kill them, and I paid the price later. Even after… I forget, there is no time in this place, but… even now, I do not know if I truly felt anything for them. I felt great passion for my ideals and goals, but balancing them against lives… I am not sure if such a thing is possible.

"In short I lived as most men lived, muddling along without a clear piece of the picture. I know that sometimes it seemed like I had power, but really I had no more than any other man had. As a society, or more broadly as a people, we were still quite young, and understood little about human nature and less of human stupidity. It is amazing how many wars were won by people who had no idea of the odds they were facing but went ahead anyway. No one managed to control all of the world, or unite it, if those are fundamentally one and the same as you say – "

"Shh!" she exclaimed. "I want to hear this part."

They could hear the teacher reading aloud: "'It's – it's _true_?' faltered Professor McGonagall. 'After all he's done … all the people he's killed … he couldn't kill a little boy?'"

"So, what am I?" demanded he of her. "A twisted heart, tragically misunderstood – or a black-hearted villain, a monster with a blank face?"

"Both," she said, giving him a look that clearly said 'Lay off the melodramatics,' "and I do mean, both at the same time."

"That's impossible," he said, then as an afterthought, "– or else the writer has a really scattered mind."

"It is not impossible," she stated, with the implacability of one who has become a myth. "Just as light can be both a particle or a wave, or a galaxy have the same mold as an atom, or the first man be male and female. Furthermore, it does take skill to play both chords in harmony, so that the result is greater than either of its components."

"Right," he said. "Somehow I think all that is going to be lost on the target audience. I mean, they're children!"

"And children have the capacity to see things in certain ways, whereas adults may stay inflexible. All stories start with children. Or have you forgotten that?"

"If I have, it is because I am a child," he said, matching her coolness. Then, reverting back to his more natural style, "So how did you arrange this thing, anyway? I suppose being Naga's daughter helps – "

"It does not," she retorted. "Few of us remember him, for he was a god and did not come here when people stopped believing in him. He ceased to exist. That is all. And for your information, any influence, if I had any, would have been used to procure this tale – the one that we are seeing now."

"You mean we're not actually looking into the living world?"

"No. It is a tale of a living world, told by a girl who was in that classroom. Remember that it is impossible for the two types of worlds to meet; they are shared and connected only through stories and myths. Likewise, the living can only perceive us through tales. I know that to you, with your fixed ideas of life and death, it seems odd, but this world is no less real than any others. It follows certain rules: different ones than the one we come from, perhaps, but there are rules nonetheless. It is true that time flows differently here, and it is rather easier to travel to other worlds corresponding to different living worlds; but this world is neither lesser nor greater than our former world. It is different, that is all.

"Some have theorised that it is possible to travel to the living worlds from here, but that involves dying from Death, if they are to be believed. Even if you could, would you want to end up possibly in a completely different world than the one you were originally from, and with your memories lying dormant until they were completely erased by new ones? In any case – whether the dead and the living occupy a cycle or a one-way road – you would not want to go to a world of the living."

"Oh." He drooped a little, though he let her think it was only disappointment at being unable to somehow steal back there someday. – Secretly, though, it was nostalgia. "So how does the story-making happen? I take it you did not just implant the story into some writer's mind in a dream, fully-formed?"

"No, this is how it works. First, I chose a world different from ours – it is a lot more technologically advanced, in this case. Then I had to wait for the right moment – when somewhere, someone was dreaming of someone like you. I gave them the minimal details and the story grew out of there. Soon you may do it yourself."

"So that world doesn't have magic?"

"Exactly, because if it could happen on that world, many laws would be broken. You never existed there, and never will."

"Except as a story. In a stupid, shallow children's story that no one's going to believe, as this caricature – "

In a flash she pinned him against a wall, her face very close to his.

"Well, you wanted this. You wanted immortality. I tell you now that there is no other way. If you do not like it, say the word and I will make it so the tale never existed in the first place; and you will not attempt to spread the tale yourself, for you have little understanding of subtlety, or of yourself. I have done a favour for you, and I am loath to retract it, but I can and I shall if you keep up this foolishness."

He looked at her. "So you do care," he said.

She did not speak, while the classroom emptied, darkened, and refilled several hundred times. Then, as the teacher opened the book once again to page seven, this time to a different class, she said, "I shall forgive you for that, for you are newly come to this world and are still not used to its rules. Know this, then: our former world has nothing to do with this one. Whatever happened in the living world is of no consequence here, save to one alone. You must forget what happened in the other world; we never loved here, and never will."

"You're wrong," he said, and leaned in close; but at the last second she turned away.

"Here is another paradox for you, then; that both joy and sorrow can be felt on the same occasion. I did regret that we had little time together for love, but that is over now."

"At least say that you live on, in that half-baked tale of yours," he said, staring off into the distance.

"Yes," she admitted at last, "I do; but in a very minor role, and one likely to be forgotten quickly. You included it in your wish, and I could not refuse it through our terms; but I thought it was best…"

"And Richard?" He looked up at her, though he was long past the anguish of uncertainty; he knew the answer already.

"He is not included at all. Attitudes in that world, at that time – "

He closed his eyes. "It is a lie, then," he whispered.

"No," she said, yet again, "it is not a lie! Your life has only been interpreted by that writer according to the limits of her world. She has no other point of reference; neither do her readers. If someone told you it was possible to fly without magic, would you believe them?"

"Probably, yes," he muttered.

"The point is that there are different levels of truths. Metaphors are not the same as lies; they are used to bring certain things to a comprehensible level. If done properly, the translation of a tale into a different setting does not distort or diminish its core. It may add meaning, rather."

"Well – how do I die, in the story?" he asked.

She looked at him steadily. "Without dignity. With your weakness exposed. By your own hand."

He sighed. "At least that part is true. Before, I did not want my tale to be told in such a fashion. I had rather it be in a world close to our own – "

"It cannot! I have told you already: it cannot be told in a world where you might possibly exist, given the correct circumstances. The subject of a tale and the teller cannot exist in the same world, at the same time. And if it is not to your liking, let me remind you once again this is the _only_ way to immortality – "

"– but you have convinced me. It will do," he continued wearily, smiling at her.

She blinked, but recovered quickly. "Be thankful it was not like the case of Loki Skywalker, then."

"I thought he was a god?"

She smiled and took his arm. "Well, a child of beings older than the gods. He was imprisoned beneath the earth, but did not fade away when people stopped believing in him. Rather, he chose to come here. He wanted to reintroduce himself to the living world, so he chose a time sufficiently removed from his own and seeded a new story of himself in a writer. Regrettably, he did not have a benefactor – "

"An ancient, beautiful, and wise benefactor, like some I could mention," he interjected, returning her smile.

"– and his choice of host already had a strong idea of what he wanted, so Loki's tale ended up almost unrecognisably skewed. The bit about him shooting the sun god through the eye was particularly bad, I thought. The Adventures of Luke Starkiller, indeed!"

A quick flash of concern on his part: "Do you think my story will end up the same way, then?"

She stared at something he could not see, and smiled. "You know, I think it will turn out quite well. The children will grow up, and pass the story on to their children; and there is plenty of room for expansion. Everyone will see you through a slightly different window, but there will always be something of _you_ in each vision."

"Really?" he said. "Tell me then, Nagini, were my eyes really red with slits for pupils?"

"No," she said demurely, "I doubt they were, Voldemort."


End file.
